in 2001.Â Her name changed five times. The first was in 1937 when she left China. It was during the Chinese Exclusion era (1882-1943) when America banned Chinese from entering the country.Â One of the ways to circumvent the discriminatory laws was to assume the identity of a person in the exempt class.Â

Gum Toâ€™s mother found a family about to leave the war torn country and whose daughter had died.Â She persuaded them to take her daughter in their dead daughterâ€™s place. Louie Gum To became Kam Sau Quon, their daughter on paper.

In America, a teacher gave her the name Lettie Kam. When she married Thomas Wing Jue in 1945, her name changed to Lettie Jue.Â But Jue was Thomasâ€™ paper name and in 1952, he legally changed his name back to his real family surname, Lowe.Â Lettie was now Lettie Kam Lowe.Â After he passed away,Lettie married Abelardo Cooper and her name changed for the sixth time toLettie Lowe Cooper.

In 2015, her daughter Felicia Lowe made â€œChinese Couplets,â€ an acclaimed documentary about her motherâ€™s life; from â€œpaper daughterâ€ to successful entrepreneur, she personified the American Dream.

In 1924, a nine-year old Chinese-American named Martha Lum was prohibited from attending Rosedale Consolidated High School in Bolivar County, Mississippi solely because she was of Chinese descent. The Supreme Court held that Gong Lum had not shown that there were not segregated schools accessible for the education of Martha Lum in Mississippi; therefore, Martha Lum was not allowed to go to the school for white children.

The picture directly below shows the two Lum sisters in third or fourth grade in the first row among white students. It was likely that the Supreme Court decision was not known in other local schools, for Gong Lum moved the family to Elaine, Arkansas where his girls attended white public schools. Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927) was effectively overruled by the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools.Â

The Anti-Miscegenation Act of 1889 prohibited Chinese men from marrying white women. The Cable Act of 1922 terminated citizenship of white American women who married Asian men. These laws were not fully overturned until the 1950s.

Immigrant Quok Shee was the "alleged wife" of Chew Hoy Quong. When she arrived in San Francisco, she was detained and interrogated for nearly 2 years on Angel Island, mostly because Chinese women were suspected to be prostitutes in that era.

More than an inch thick, her "investigation case file" was opened in September 1916 and was not closed until August 1918. She was repeatedly interrogated, denied access to a lawyer, plagued by depression, subjected to smallpox, and was isolated from a husband who was her only contact in America, yet whom she hardly knew. The file contained 150 pages of legal maneuvering, inquisitorial interrogations, medical evaluations, intrigue court ordersâ€”all because one Chinese woman tried to enter the United States.In 1927, her husband Chew told immigration authorities that his wife had complained he was not giving her enough money and had run off with another man.

Tye Leung Schulze became the first Chinese-American woman to vote in the presidential primary.

Tye Leung was born in San Francisco in 1887. When she was 14, her parents arranged for her to marry an older man. She ran away and sought refuge with Donaldina Cameron. She became the first Chinese-American woman to pass the civil service examination. Not only was she the first Chinese woman hired to work at Angel Island, but she also became the first Chinese-American woman to vote in a presidential primary election when she cast a ballot in San Francisco on May 19, 1912.

1909
The Angry Angel of Chinatown, Donaldina Cameron, rescued 3000 Chinese slave girls.
Donaldina Cameron ( July 26, 1869-January 4, 1968 )was a Presbyterian missionary who advocated for social justice. She rescued and educated more than 3000 Chinese immigrant girls and women who were sold into slavery during her ministry from 1895 to 1934. Cameron House still stands today in San Francisco.

Born to a poor family in Guangdong, Bow Kum was sold by her parents for $40 and later bought by Lau He Dong, a member of the Snakehead gang in San Francisco, for $3,000.

Lau fell in love with her, but Bow Kum chose to marry a gardener and ran away with him to New York. Lau's love quickly turned to hate and he asked his gang to seek revenge. On August 15,1909, Bow Kum was brutally murdered. Her husband was also part of a Chinese gang and they fought back. The war between the Chinatown gangs lasted more than a year. On January 11,1910, the alleged killers, Lau He Dong and Lau Shong, were acquitted because each of their gangs produced contradictory evidence, and the jury could not decide who the real killers were.

The U.S. and the Chinese government brokered talks between the rival gangs at the end of 1910. New York's Chinatown eventually regained its peace in 1913.

In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Court ruled that practically everyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen.

Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents around 1871, was denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad in 1894. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed essentially everyone born in the U.S.â€”even the U.S.-born children of foreignersâ€”and could not be limited in its effect by an act of Congress.

Polly Bemis was sold by her peasant father for two bags of much-needed seed. She was smuggled into the United States in 1872 and sold as a slave in San Francisco. In 1894, she married Charles Bemis to prevent herself from being deported.

She later gained her residence paper because she was able to prove that she could not apply in time due to a major snowstorm in Idaho in 1895.

Her cabin, known as Polly Bemis House, became a museum and was placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1988. Her story was fictionalized in the 1991 film: A Thousand Pieces of Gold.

In Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473(1885), Mamie Tape fought for the right to public education.

Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473 (1885) was a landmark case in the California Supreme Court. In 1884, Mamie, then eight years old, was denied admission to the Spring Valley School due to her Chinese ancestry. Her parents sued the San Francisco Board of Education and won. Their argument was that the school violated California Political Code. The California Supreme Court upheld the decision. Justice McGuire wrote, "To deny a child, born of Chinese parents in this state, entrance to the public schools would be a violation of the law of the state and the Constitution of the United States."

A bill was quickly passed to establish the Oriental Public School in San Francisco. The school was renamed Gordon J. Lau Elementary School in 1998.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882.

It was one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in the U.S. history, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. The act followed the Angell Treaty of 1880, a set of revisions to the U.S. - China Burlingame Treaty of 1868 that allowed the U.S. to suspend Chinese immigration.

The Act was initially intended to last for ten years, but was renewed in 1892 with the Geary Act becoming permanent in 1902. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States. It was repealed by the Magnuson Act of 1943.

Burlingame Treaty was the first equal treaty between the U.S. and China.

Granting China most favored nation status, the Burlingame-Seward Treaty formally established friendly ties between China and the United States. The Treaty advocated equal treatment of China and a welcoming stance toward Chinese immigrants.

This Treaty also opened the door for Chinese laborers to immigrate to the U.S. During economic depression, white laborers blamed cheap Chinese laborers for their unemployment. Congress amended The Burlingame Treaty and in its place, The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882.

1875
The Page Act of 1875 forbade the entry of Chinese laborers and immoral Chinese women.

After the passage of the Page Act of 1875 which aimed to "end cheap Chinese laborers and immoral Chinese women," custom officials concentrated their efforts by forbidding Chinese women entering American borders. The officials believed that by preventing Chinese women from entering the U.S., Chinese laborers would realize that they could not find wives and would go back to China to establish families.

In Chu Lung v. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275, Chu Lung and 21 other Chinese women who arrived in San Francisco were classified as " lewd and debauched" and must therefore be prostitutes. Upon hearing testimony from a witness that only lewd Chinese women wore colorful belly-bands, the judge found all 22 women guilty. However, the Supreme Court sided with the women. It ruled that Congress, not the states, had the power to regulate immigration. It declared California law requiring a bond for all ill-defined class of people overstepped its boundary and that the women should be released.

Chinese girl in belly-band

The names of the 22 Chinese women in the Supreme Court filesï¼ˆ1874ï¼‰

The most notorious Chinese American prostitute Ah Toy sued Yee Ah Tye for demanding her Dupont Street prostitutes pay him a tax. In the 1854 case of People v. Hall, the judge ruled that the Chinese had no business in American courts, and could not testify nor become witnesses. Ah Toy's lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.